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<title>How blue the sky through your eyes by Kartaylir</title>
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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24429610">How blue the sky through your eyes</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kartaylir/pseuds/Kartaylir'>Kartaylir</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>A Memory Called Empire - Arkady Martine</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 07:48:53</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>442</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24429610</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kartaylir/pseuds/Kartaylir</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>They return to the park, and think of poetry and dumplings.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Yskandr Aghavn &amp; Mahit Dzmare</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Writing Rainbow Make Up Round</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>How blue the sky through your eyes</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gammarad/gifts">Gammarad</a>.</li>



    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>She sat beneath the gray-blue sky and ate dumplings with oil that now seemed too spicy with one bite, too sweet with another. The park held <em>askretim</em> still, radiant and tense where so recently the young had slept undisturbed. It felt as if the petals of the Empire, the world had unfurled around her, and she felt something of Yskander’s memory in that. To be within but not of, and to carry with you your own flexibility of meaning. To play the barbarian and pretend you hadn’t.</p><p>They were united in that understanding, just as they were in the feel of soft carpet beneath bare toes, in how the colors in his rooms had matched a particular mood of the sky.</p><p>&lt;That was why he entertained me, at first,&gt; Yskander said, in the silence and energy of mourning. For the man, for the peace of empire-had-been, for the Empire that would be which Mahit had excised herself from. &lt;The sun which burns resplendent is eclipsed in distance by one raised mortal hand.&gt;</p><p>There was an image of blood smeared across Yskander’s larger fingers, of ritual and pain etched across his palm. The way he’d mirrored the expressions of the Teixcalaanli around him, even all his experience leaving him lost in such a moment.</p><p>Of all empires, this one wrapped such things in layers of words. The crimson of blood, the ache of promise. The sense of it pressing down into her body until she held memory back from her flesh.</p><p>And despite even all the polish Yskander had gained, he’d still taken his chances to play barbarian. When he’d looked down upon Six Direction, his face split in that wide smile, eyes cast in shadow. </p><p>She could feel the memory of long nights, of staring up at the stars in vain distance. Lsel had left him only duty, and he found wonderment in the concern he’d seen in Six Direction’s eyes. </p><p>In all of Teixcalaan, how few people did the Empire not own? Perhaps that was a limit of Empire, that it required an outside to tell its own truths uncowed.</p><p><em>Do you think he liked the poem?</em> she thought. She’d been so proud of constructing such a thing. The memory of names that might have been. Now, she could see more of the strands, the murmur of the spear’s second meaning. The way Three Seagrass had aided her so gently.</p><p>&lt;It wasn’t mine.&gt; Yskander’s thoughts faded back into silence.</p><p>Mahit bit into the last of her dumplings and let the flavor of it burst out, another piece of the City dissolved into her.</p><p>Another fragment of the world to leave behind.</p>
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